OK, its time to have a catch up on things.

Hello.

Its been a while I know but I don't want to end up posting about things that don't really deserve a post in their own right. I would much rather save up a couple of bits and put it all together into a single post. Then, hopefully, it makes my stuff a little bit more interesting. Im far from the the fastest of people to produce things. This weekend I was at the Railex exhibition and saw Mick and Alan who were aiming to produce a layout in a weekend, that amazes me as do anyone else who can 'knock things together' in a weekend. The 22xx engines of mine are a classic example of my speed. These were started over the Christmas break (2015 before anyone asks!) as a 'quick project' and as you can see below they are still very much work in progress.
Anyway, enough of my waffle, here is a bit of an update on the bits and bobs I have been doing...

Q1

In previous posts I have shown progress on some CNC machined wheels. These were ultimately for the Dapol Q1 which I attempted to convert a few years back. Anyway, this work then prompted a complete overhaul of the engine and the result of which can be seen below. The list of work was as follows...

• Re-wheeled with home brew CNC machined wheels.
• Replaced the intermediate gearbox with a new CNC machined body and MOD 0.2 gears.
• Replaced the coupling rods with a pair of custom etched ones.
• Replaced both CV joints with a couple of my designed and 3D printed joints.
• Reworked the tender wheels by replacing the steel axles (pin points) and insulating bushes.

Its lots better than the previous version by quite a bit, there are no more wobbly wheels anymore and it runs much smoother.  The engine has a slight bit of 'cogging' at slow speeds which I think might be a slight discrepancy between the worm and the worm wheel but I am in two minds if to strip and replace or see if a decent bit of running improves it. Next step is to fit a decoder.

22xx

 These two engines are turning into another 'slow burner' project (I cant really afford another one!). I must admit though that I am particularly pleased with how these are turning out and I can say that to date these two are the best engines I have ever produced. Currently I have been working my way through the brake gear for the engines and once this is done it will be onto the tender brakes. Sadly the plastic brake bits you get with the tender 'kit' from the association doesn't seems to fit so I put together an etch for the brakes so I just need to work out how to fit them.

Rivet Press

This is the latest thing off of my workbench. There are a few future projects where I will need something to form rivets so I came up with the idea for this tool.
Its based upon a pair or parallel jaw pliers which were produced to punch holes in metal. The advantage of using these is I could remove the bits designed for punching holes and replace them with some bits to form rivets. These were turned up on my lathe from silver steel and hardened. The 'pointy bit' is adjustable using a M3 thread and locknut so the rivet pliers can be adjusted to suit various thickness's of metal. I am happy with the resulting formed rivets on standard 0.2mm thick Nickel Silver sheet and I am looking forward to using it in anger sometime in the future.

So you lot are now upto speed on what I have been doing. There are a few other bits and bobs in the pipeline but I will post about those when there is enough progress to show you all.

Julia :o)

P.S. Highclere is due to go to the CMRA show in Stevenage Jan 2017. I'm feeling the pressure already!

Boxpoking about

Hello.

So what have I been upto since my last post I hear you all ask. Well, I have been mostly CNCing stuff.

I have a Dapol Q1 which has been treated to a conversion a while ago. For those of you who remember it I ended up writing an article for the Model Railway Journal which ended up in issue 211. The problem was that I was never happy with the results. While the engine did run it wasn't upto my standards as the wheels were a kind of hybrid of dapol and 2mmSA.

As with many things in life, the older you get, the more knowledgeable you get and this is a classic case. Since my last attempt at conversion I have rethought an approach to producing the wheels for another attempt at getting something I am happy with. This time armed with a CNC mill I made a start...

This is how the wheel started off. A 3D model of a scale wheel with a 2mmSA rim attached, from this I can generate a CNC programme. In my previous post I showed how I turned up the blanks from Paxolin and added the association rims.

The wheel blanks were clamped in a rotary table and clocked with a dial test indicator to ensure they were centred correctly. I had a frustrating time getting the DTI to fit the milling machine because of the depth on the Z axis wasn't enough. This meant I had to make a little bracket (seen clamped to the mill chuck) which was a pain.

Once the wheel was centred the programme was then run. The milling cutter is a 0.5mm slot drill which conveniently was suitable for all the milling and drilling operations. The programme took about an hour per wheel. It seemed to take forever to do all 7 (6+1 spare) spread over a number of evenings.

And these are the result to date. The backs need tidying up a bit on the lathe but other than that the next step is cutting some axles and fitting them to the chassis.

Am I happy with them? Definitely, they look like Boxpok wheels and fingers crossed they are an improvement on the previous attempt.

Julia.